Finding the balance in college sports
The dog finally caught it's own tail. What's next?
As I have argued for years, college athletes should be able to make money if people are willing to pay them. The reasoning is straightforward. College athletes are amateurs. That means they aren’t being paid for being athletes, and thus should be able to make money elsewhere. To call an athlete an amateur, but then restrict their labor, is perverse. If the Chicago Bulls tells one of the players that he can’t take money as a stuntman or ride a motorcycle without a helmet, fine, that seems reasonable given the team pays their players millions of dollars to be in a physical condition to play basketball. But amateur athletes shouldn’t have any of those restrictions. They are participating in a hobby. One that makes billions of dollars, but a hoppy nonetheless. Their labor should not be restricted.
Second, and I’ll keep shouting this into I’m blue in the face, no other student is restricted in this manner. Imagine if the NYU drama department told its students that since they were performing as amateur actors in university productions, they weren’t allowed to seek paid work elsewhere. No one would attend that program! On the contrary, the NYU drama school wants their students to be recruited for paid acting work, or any other work. That’s *supposed* to be the whole point of going to college. While at the University of Illinois, I was part of the Illini Union Board, a student group that was funded directly by the university and funded hundreds of events throughout the year. I was also a tour guide, a paid position at the university. Neither entity put any restrictions on my external labor activities. And why would they? The more you think about it, the more bizarre it seems that because a student also plays on a sports team, that means they shouldn’t be allowed to do other work.
This battle raged for decades. College sports’ governing body, the NCAA, insisted that college athletes can not accept money from anybody, or even sell things that they own. It was absurd. Thankfully, in 2021 the Supreme Court put an end to this unjust system. Athletes would be allowed to accept money from anyone who wants to give it to them.
I hoped that the new system would be one that would carefully balance the interests of players and universities. That new rules would be drawn up after careful consideration and deliberation. I should have known better. As most college athletes will tell you, the NCAA is incompetent. They were going to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court but had no interest in fairly implementing the rules. The result is the wild west of college sports. Millions of dollars are flowing from wealthy alumni to teenage athletes. Kadyn Proctor, who was raised in Iowa, committed to the University of Iowa, but then attended Alabama, was paid thousands of dollars to transfer to Iowa after his freshman season with the Crimson Tide. He did transfer to Iowa, but then transferred back to Alabama before the football season even started. Oops. Then there was Matthew Sluka, who claims he was promised $100,000 to transfer from Holy Cross to UNLV. When that money never materialized, he refused to play.
It would be tempting to look at these stories and say that those who advocated for such a system were wrong. I disagree. I think the way the new system has been implemented has been bad, borderline terrible, but there is still time to write rules that successfully balance the interests of players and colleges. To that end, here are some suggestions the NCAA should consider.
Restrict transferring. Currently, players can transfer not only every year but multiple times during a year. This is crazy. It makes a mockery out of the idea that these players are anything else (they are supposedly students as well). Before Covid, student-athletes could transfer, but they had to sit out a year at their new school. Given that athletes could only use their four years of eligibility over a five-year window, this meant in practice that students could only transfer once. One exception to this was for graduate students - if a player graduated with an undergraduate degree they could transfer to another program without sitting out and taking graduate classes.
The NCAA should change the system to have more in common with how it used to be. Allowing players to transfer every year, or even multiple times in a year, is bad for the sport, bad for universities, and in some instances bad for the players themselves. It allows boosters to constantly court players, and for players to constantly question their decision. I cannot imagine choosing a school, and then every day have to ask whether or not it would be better for me to leave. Some stability is needed.
To that end, once a player enrolls in a school, they should have to stay at that university for two years. Then, after their sophomore year, they should be able to transfer without having to sit out a year. Students could also transfer without sitting out after graduation to attend graduate school elsewhere. Thus, at most, a student-athlete could transfer after their sophomore year and after their senior year. This allows flexibility with some stability.
Restrict coaches. Currently, coaches sign long contracts, recruit students promising them the moon, and then bolt for a better school. This needs to end. It is not teenagers doing this, but grown men and women. The change needed is for universities and coaches should have to fulfill their contracts. If a college and coach want to sign a long-term agreement, great! They now have to stick it out. A coach should be required to fulfill the entire contract. If a university wants to terminate a coach (other than for cause), they should still have to pay the maximum amount in that contract.
This would also increase stability for colleges, coaches, and players. On balance, it would benefit all three. Coaches won’t have to worry as much about being replaced. Universities won’t have to worry about coaches moving to better schools. Players will know that their coach is sticking around.
NIL contracts should be public and standardized. There is a fundamental power imbalance between boosters funding these million-dollar agreements and the teenagers on the receiving end. As seen in the Matthew Sluka controversy, there is also scope for disagreement. NIL deals should be made public and should be standardized. If players are going to be paid by third parties, it should be clear how much they are being paid, when they are being paid, and what they are being paid for. Again, by making this public, everyone stands to benefit. Players of a given caliber will have a fair idea of their market worth. Boosters will be protected against throwing away their money. Colleges will know what’s going on with their players. More information will be beneficial for all parties involved.
Will there still be problems? Of course. Just like contract disputes, controversies, and scandals happen in professional sports, there are going to be issues at the college level. Any industry that has millions of dollars, or teenagers, involved has difficulties, and college sports has both. The point is that the system today is incomplete. With a few changes, it would be better for everyone.